Skizzenbuch, Italien

Curatorial notes

This is the cover of a sketchbook, titled "Skizzenbuch, Italien" by Wilhelm Wach. Sketchbooks like these were important tools for artists, particularly in the 19th century. Italy, with its rich classical heritage, became a popular destination for Northern European artists seeking inspiration. The sketchbook served as a portable museum, a place to record impressions of ancient ruins, Renaissance masterpieces, and the Italian landscape. Consider the role of institutions in shaping artistic practice. Academies often encouraged travel to Italy as part of an artist's education. They believed that studying the art of the past was essential for creating art in the present. Sketchbooks like this one were a way for artists to engage with and internalize those traditions. The survival of this sketchbook reminds us that art history isn't just about finished paintings and sculptures. It is also about the traces of artistic labor. These include the sketches, notes, and reflections that offer a window into the creative process. Resources such as letters, diaries, and travel guides can further enrich our understanding of this sketchbook and its place in the history of art.

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stadelmuseumover 2 years ago

Probably at the beginning of October 1818, the 31-year-old Wilhelm Wach took this portrait-format sketchbook with him on a journey that led him through various Italian, mainly Tuscan towns. He primarily used pencil, more rarely pen and ink, to record landscapes, cityscapes and architectural views. He was also excited about works of art, especially from the Renaissance, and reproduced them in numerous sketches. The verso pages usually remained blank.This ‘Tuscan Journey’ took place during Wach’s scholarship stay in Rome in 1817/19. Due to his sparse dating of the sketches, its duration and exact route cannot be reconstructed, but Wach visited the Tuscan cities of Lucca, Carrara, Massa, Montignoso, Pescia, Prato, Florence, Pisa, San Gimignano and Siena as well as the cities of Bologna and Venice in northern Italy. Before or during this trip, he also stayed in Umbria, to be exact in Orvieto, Perugia and Assisi, to which he had already travelled in July 1818 (see Wach’s other sketchbook, also in the Städel Museum, Inv. 16297). In his sketchbook in pencil, Wach initially recorded views of hill and mountain landscapes as well as towns and churches, including single details. Later, he covered the outer lines of some of the sketches with pen and brown ink, and he gave some of his drawings with more pronounced contours a stronger three-dimensionality with a dense layering of some sections with pencil or pen and ink. Works of art that attracted his attention were often outlined in pencil, and he rarely traced the lines with pen. These were mainly made in churches and monasteries but also from models in the Palazzo Publico in Siena as well as in the academies in Florence, Bologna and Venice. There Wach seems to have been particularly interested in frescoes by renowned artists from the 13th to the 16th centuries.The sketchbook was foliated in pencil on the recto pages, probably later and by someone else, not including the six(?) pages that were probably cut or torn out by Wach himself. The numbering of the book – “III” – in pencil on the front mirror, an overview of the contents noted there, as well as isolated notes placed underneath illustrations in the book, appear to have been made by another hand, an assessment based on a comparative examination of all three of Wach’s sketchbooks kept in the Städel Museum.For a complete description of the sketchbook, please check “Research”.

Skizzenbuch, Italien

Wilhelm Wach

Städel Museum

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